A New Way to Help a Patient Who Had a Stroke

When a person has had a stroke there are many things that can be affected. Parts of the person’s body could be paralyzed to varying degrees, their thinking may be affected and their ability to find words to express themselves can become difficult if not impossible.

As a matter of fact, approximately 40% of people who have a stroke experience difficulty in understanding or finding the words to express themselves in both writing and verbal communications. This condition is called aphasia. 

In half of these cases the difficulty can persist for at least a year.

Here’s where the new therapy comes into play. It turns out that many of these people still retained the ability to sing. This has led to this new therapy approach that was discovered by researchers at the University of Helsinki. 

In the study, they used a trained music therapist and a trained choir conductor. These experts led the patients in special rehabilitation sessions that included choral singing, tablet-assisted singing, and a therapy that’s called melodic intonation therapy.

After five months of therapy, these patients had improved their ability to communicate and find the words they were looking for. There were also several side benefits in that the singing enhanced the participants’ social participation and it even reduced the burden on their caregivers.

So…doe a deer a female dear, ray a drop of golden sun…

(Reported Bottom Line Health, March 2023)